Marnie also develops business plans, marketing strategies,
financial projections, & proposals for Internet projects.
Her plans and strategies have garnered clients an average
of $100,000 each in seed capital.

Marnie lives on a Georgia
farm with her husband and their six
children.

Everyone knows you need to register your site
with the major search engines to get any Web traffic, but what
about after that? Let's face it, it's getting harder and harder
to put up a page, register it with some search engines and get
any significant traffic. There's just too much competition out
there. There are five proven tactics I've used and seen used to
build a good traffic base:

Run periodic contests. If you sell
products/services from your Web site, give away a sample
in a monthly drawing. You can register your contest with
various contest sites like www.sweepstakesonline.com and a dozen or so others. This is a great way
to pull traffic to your site and feature your products in
a non-pressured way. If you don't sell anything or can't
afford to give away a sample, find other sites that do
and offer them the exposure of being promoted on your
site in exchange for a prize donation. An associate of
mine is the master of Web contests. Alanna Webb of www.lovestories.com

features a different prize every day! She gets
hundreds of entries/day and attributes much of her
traffic (over 1 million impressions/month) to her
contests.

Create a periodic newsletter and
distribute it at least monthly. Gather e-mail (and
other pertinent data) on visitors to your site by offering
them a free newsletter on your industry or specialty.
Make it fresh and informative, and give them an incentive
to visit your site again. You can do this by e-mailing
your newsletter with teaser-blurbs on each article or tip
and then point them back to your site for more.

Create sponsorship alliances with other
well-trafficked sites that target your same audience.
Alexa Internet has been a good sponsorship alliance for my web site. I feature their button on all my pages, and
they show my banner on their toolbar. Look around for
sites that you can swap links, banners, or buttons with.
And be selective. You only have so much space.

Keep your content fresh. If you
want people to come back, you have to give them an
incentive to do so. If your site is stagnant, why would
anyone want to return? Let them know when you make
updates so they'll know to come back. For example, here
at the Sideroad it's a well-established fact that more
great articles will be added every Monday.

Become known as an expert in your field
by networking on-line. This is a whole sermon in
itself, and will be the topic of an upcoming article.
Here are a few tips:

Become active on mail-liststhat target your typical
client. Talk it up, offer advice, and be sure to have
a good signature line that explains what you do.

If you can write well, submit
articles to e-zinesthat target your market.

Become active in chat forums
that center on your specialty. Volunteer as a guest
speaker for chat forums.

There are dozens of ways to build traffic, but
over the last few years, I've seen the best results from these
relatively cost-free methods. Tune in next week for the
strategies behind "Successful Net Networking."